HAVING FAITH Chapter Ten BORN AGAIN

 

I was not surprised that just a month after the final break with her mother, in August of 1930, Aimee Semple McPherson suffered an almost complete physical and emotional collapse. She was diagnosed with Metabolic acidosis, when the kidneys are unable to remove carbon dioxide from the blood. The body tries to compensate by expelling more through the lungs, causing hypo-ventilation. The victim is left constantly exhausted. 

As a result Sister Aimee spent most of 1930 in a sick bed. The following year of 1931, Aimee returned to her demanding schedule. 

And then, in September, while heading to Portland, Oregon for a week long revival, she stopped off at San Quentin Penitentiary, to visit her old enemy, Asa Keyes.

A lot of people were suspicious of the way Keyes dropped the prosecution of Aimee. And even before he stepped down as District Attorney in 1928, a grand jury was looking into the matter. Although there were a lot of rumors about a payoff, there was not enough evidence to indict Keyes for that. However he was indicted and convicted of accepting a $140,000 bribe for undermining the prosecution of the Julian Petroleum scandal.

Asa Keyes (above, right) served 3 years, and upon his release friends in the movie business found him work in several courtroom dramas, punching up the scripts with legal jargon, occasionally working as an extra, always with his back to the camera, voicing objections. He died of a stroke in 1934.

Aimee's self appointed cross-town rival, the Reverend Robert Schuler (above), deplored the “loyalty of thousands to this leader in the face of her evident and positively proven guilt.” Typically for Shuler, it was an over statement, and a few weeks later an Aimee supporter punched “Fighting Bob” in the snoot. Fighting Bob did not fight back. Still the publicity was a victory for him. 

That Christmas he was presented with a $25,000 donation, specifically to build his own radio station, making him Aimee's equal -  at lest in wattage. The only difference was that Aimee's station belonged to the Angelus Temple, while Shuler put his station in his own name. However the new reach of his anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, anti-Aimee venom inspired the L.A. Times to note, “Unless you have been attacked by Rev. 'Bob' Shuler...you don't amount to much in Los Angeles.”

Bob's ministry profited in the coming decades, culminating in the 1980 dedication of the magnificent "Crystal Cathedral" (above), which housed over 2,000 of the faithful, and broadcast weekly to a world wide television congregation of 20 million.  Any way you measure things, Bob had beaten Sister Aimee. 

However, by 2010 Bob's church was forced into bankruptcy, and three years later attendance had fallen so far that the family and corporation was forced to sell their edifice to rivals Bob had once condemned, the Catholic Church.  In 2015, when 88 year old Reverend Shuler, died of esophageal cancer, his funeral was held in the church he built, by the permission of the Catholics. 

By 1932 Aimee (above right) felt the need to return to the revival trail, and started looking for help running the Angelus Temple while she preached - sort of a replacement for her mother, Mildred Kennedy . Aimee chose as her new co-minister a “blue-eyed (dirty) blond slip of a girl" named  Rheba Crawford Splival (above, left, looking up to Aimee). 

Rheba (above) was a Salvation Army convert known in New York as “The Angel of Broadway”. But her sudden rise allowed Rheba to dream of taking over Aimee's empire. 

However the Great Depression and the haphazard bookkeeping at the Temple drained even the flood of Sunday offerings. And in 1935 Aimee was forced to execute a coup, reducing Rheba's (above) power on the board and publicly blaming the angel of Broadway and her own daughter Roberta, for the mess. 

But Rheba was an experienced street fighter, and convinced Roberta McPherson to sue her mother for defamation. In a separate suit Rheba demanded $1 million for herself, claiming Aimee had called her a Judas. Mildred "Sister Minnie" Kennedy testified against  her daughter Aimee in both cases. A judge awarded  daughter Roberta $5,000, and Aimee settled out of court with Rheba for an undisclosed amount.

By 1940 the running of the Angelus Temple had been finally placed in the hands of professionals, with Aimee as the spiritual guide only.  It was the role she'd been born to. 

No longer speaking to either her daughter Roberta, or her mother "Sister Minnie",  Aimee had come to rely more and more on her son Rolf (above). And at ten in the morning of Tuesday, 26 September 1944,  it was Rolf who found his mother unconscious in her hotel bed.. There were rumors of course that the “Miracle Woman” had committed suicide. 

And the truth was that Aimee had taken sleeping pills the night before. 

But when they made her feel ill, Aimee had called two separate doctors seeking advice. The first was unavailable, and the second recommended she call a third.  She passed out before she could make the final call. Aimee Semple McPherson was declared dead at 11:15 in the morning of 26 September, 1944. Six thousand faithful attended her funeral in Forest Lawn Cemetery, Burbank, California, on a hill side overlooking the Burbank studio lot. 

At her death, Aimee's personal estate was valued at just $10,000. Daughter Roberta was bequeathed  $2,000. Her mother Mildred Kennedy got a mere $10, with the stipulation that if she contested the will, she was to received nothing at all. 

The remaining $8,000 went to Rolf, the only one who had remained loyal. He would lead the Angelus Temple for the next 44 years, the mother church to almost 9 million believers world wide.  The Temple's founder was not perfect, but the only people who expected her to be that, were the true believers.

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HAVING FAITH Chapter Four INTENT

 

I believe Aimee Semple McPherson's kidnapping would have remained a footnote in L.A. history, but for the burning envy of one man - the Reverend Robert Pierce “Fighting Bob” Shuler. After six years of tireless effort, the fire and brimstone preacher's Trinity Methodist church, at 1201 Flower Street in downtown Los Angeles,  had a congregation of 6,000. But that was barely a whisper  beside Aimee's 100,000 followers, nationwide.

In sermon after sermon., Shuler (above, left) denounced Aimee's vulgar Pentecostal practice of speaking in tongues and faith healing, and her habit of regularly inviting other women preachers, black ministers, and even Catholics priests to share her pulpit. The Tennessee born Shuler supported the Klu Klux Klan, and denounced Jews.  But his prime enemy was Sister Aimee, a divorced woman and thus the epitome of the "liberalism, pacifism, humanism, Unitarianism, universalism, and all the other little foxes that are destroying the vineyard that was planted by the Methodist fathers."

I suspect the real core of Shuler's anger was his envy of Aimee's 500 watt radio station, KFSG - "K"all Four Square Gospel. To him, the power it gave her voice was an outrage, especially since he had no similar outlet. The instant word of Aimee's drowning broke, Bob was convinced it was a hoax designed to make her even more famous.

Bob began publicly demanding Los Angeles District Attorney Asa Keyes investigate Sister Aimee  for fraud. And when Shuler convinced the Chamber of Commerce and 8 other churches to add their voices to his. D.A. Asa Keyes, being an elected official, responded immediately.

The very train that carried Aimee's mother, Mrs. Mildred “Minnie” Kennedy, Aimee's daughter and son to Douglas, Arizona, also brought D.A. Keyes and his chief Assistant D.A. Joseph Ryan. The two investigators posed as bookends to the family reunion (above), Keyes to the left and Ryan to the right of Aimee's hospital bed. And Keyes noted that on Aimee's left wrist was the watch she said had left in the hotel in Venice Beach. Still, the prosecutors gave the evangelist a sympathetic hearing. But  instead of returning with Sister Aimee to Los Angeles, D.A. Ryan immediately took a train for Northern California, following a tip from a Santa Barbara millionaire.

The wealthy retired engineer John Hersey (below)  was vacationing in the village of Camel-by-the-Sea, at the southern end of the Monterrey peninsula, about sixty miles south of San Francisco. On the afternoon of Wednesday, 26 May, Hersey was driving eastbound when at San Antonio Street, a block before the beach, he had to slow to allow two pedestrians to cross the intersection in front of him.

He was so stunned he had to pull to the curb. The woman, he was certain, was Sister Aimee, who had been reported drown the week before, 300 miles to the south. Hersey (above) recognized her because he had attended a service at the Angelus temple the year before. However Hersey kept his observation to himself, until a month later when Aimee McPherson walked into Agua Prieta, claiming she had spent five weeks held there by kidnappers. Then, spurred on by Fighting Bob Shuler's well publicized doubts, Hersey called the District Attorney's office in Los Angeles.

With his father-in law, Detective Captain Herman Cline,  (above) D.A. Joseph Ryan first went to the location of Hersey's alleged sighting, the corner of Ocean Avenue and San Antonio street. They discovered that most of the houses in the area were small cottages offered for short term rentals. So they made a tour of the rental management companies, showing at each a photograph of Sister Aimee's most likely companion, ex-KFSG radio engineer Kenneth Ormiston.  At Carmel Reality Company, they hit pay dirt.

The office manager, Mrs. Daisy Bostick, said she knew the man in the photo as Mr George McIntyre, who had come into her office on Friday, 14 May, (four days before Aimee's "drowning") looking for a three month rental of a quiet romantic cottage (above) where his wife could recover from surgery. The cottage he picked was facing the white sand beach across Scenic Drive, just two blocks south of Ocean Avenue. And he paid the $450 rental fee on the spot, and in cash. And then, without explanation, the couple left after just a ten day stay, on 29 May, 1926

The woman living next door to the cottage rented by the “McIntyres' was Mrs Jeannette Parker. She could not swear the couple were Sister Aimee and Ormiston, but she did say photos of Sister Aimee and and her engineer resembled the very affectionate occupants, and that the affectionate male “limped”, as Omstead did. The owner of the cottage, retired insurance adjuster Henry Benedict, dropped by to make certain his guests were comfortable. He spoke briefly to "Mrs. McIntyre", who was hidden under a large hat, while "Mr. McIntyre" did not seem friendly. However Benedict did remember a woman's green bathing suit hanging on the wash line stretched across the back yard. The local grocer, Ralph Swanson, never even saw the couple, but filled their phone orders, which his delivery boys then left on the back steps. The investigators found two of the grocery lists in the back yard (below), where they had survived almost two months of dew and sun. D.A. Ryan took those away as evidence.

But evidence of what? Fighting Bob Schuler might be certain a crime had been committed. Skeptical historian Louis Adamic seemed to agree. Shortly after Aimee's rebirth he had written, “According to the Angelus Temple statistics, Aimee’s business has been better since her “escape from the kidnapers” Previously she used to convert about fifty or sixty people a night; now her average is well past one hundred. Previously she used to baptize...twenty or thirty people each Thursday; last Thursday she immersed one hundred and thirty-six.” And most conversions and baptism were accompanied by a donation.

Aimee had always been good at raising money for her temple. She would often tell the congregation that she was suffering with a headache and the jingle of coins in the collection plate would cause her pain. “No coins, please”, she would implore her flock. “Only quiet money.” Or she might give the faithful a specific goal, telling them, for instance, “Mother needs a new coat. Who will donate money today, so that mother can have a new winter coat?.” Since 18 May, there had been tens of thousands of dollars donated to the temple to pay for the “search for Aimee”, and tens of thousands more dollars, donated in memory of the presumed drown evangelist. It seemed to many an obvious fraud.

But the issue facing Los Angeles District Attorney Asa Keyes was much simpler; intent. Had Sister Aimee (above, center) conspired with her mother, Mildred Kennedy (above right), to fake the kidnapping, intending to defraud the faithful, to receive donations under false circumstances? Or did Mildred really believe Aimee had been kidnapped? Had Aimee suffered a nervous breakdown under the pressure of so many lost souls depending on her for salvation? Or, perhaps, she had just fallen in love with Ormiston, and had played no part in the temple's fund raising. Without proof of intent to defraud, there was no crime.

In early August of 1926, and without warning, D.A. Keyes (above) sent a telegram to Assistant District Attorney Ryan, who was still gathering evidence in Carmel-by-the-Sea, instructing him to close the investigation and come home. The Los Angeles Grand Jury, which had already begun to hear evidence in the case, was closed down as well. Joseph Ryan might be morally outraged over how much money poured into Aimee's temple, but moral outrage is not a violation of the criminal codes. In the United States the government is secular, and a crime against God is not a crime that can be tried in a human court. There was no proof of intent. And even if Aimee had intended to commit a crime, as Fighting Bob Shuler believed, without proof, it looked as if she was going to get away with it.

And then Mrs Mildred Kennedy (above, right), Aimee's mother, came to Bob Shuler's rescue.

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HAVING FAITH Chapter Ten BORN AGAIN

 

I was not surprised that just a month after the final break with her mother, in August of 1930, Aimee Semple McPherson suffered an almost complete physical and emotional collapse. She was diagnosed with Metabolic acidosis, when the kidneys are unable to remove carbon dioxide from the blood. The body tries to compensate by expelling more through the lungs, causing hypo-ventilation. The victim is left constantly exhausted. 

As a result Sister Aimee spent most of 1930 in a sick bed. The following year of 1931, Aimee returned to her demanding schedule. 

And then, in September, while heading to Portland, Oregon for a week long revival, she stopped off at San Quentin Penitentiary, to visit her old enemy, Asa Keyes.

A lot of people were suspicious of the way Keyes dropped the prosecution of Aimee. And even before he stepped down as District Attorney in 1928, a grand jury was looking into the matter. Although there were a lot of rumors about a payoff, there was not enough evidence to indict Keyes for that. However he was indicted and convicted of accepting a $140,000 bribe for undermining the prosecution of the Julian Petroleum scandal.

Asa Keyes (above, right) served 3 years, and upon his release friends in the movie business found him work in several courtroom dramas, punching up the scripts with legal jargon, occasionally working as an extra, always with his back to the camera, voicing objections. He died of a stroke in 1934.

Aimee's self appointed cross-town rival, the Reverend Robert Schuler (above), deplored the “loyalty of thousands to this leader in the face of her evident and positively proven guilt.” Typically for Shuler, it was an over statement, and a few weeks later an Aimee supporter punched “Fighting Bob” in the snoot. Fighting Bob did not fight back. Still the publicity was a victory for him. 

That Christmas he was presented with a $25,000 donation, specifically to build his own radio station, making him Aimee's equal -  at lest in wattage. The only difference was that Aimee's station belonged to the Angelus Temple, while Shuler put his station in his own name. However the new reach of his anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, anti-Aimee venom inspired the L.A. Times to note, “Unless you have been attacked by Rev. 'Bob' Shuler...you don't amount to much in Los Angeles.”

By 1932 Aimee (above right) felt the need to return to the revival trail, and started looking for help running the Angelus Temple while she preached - sort of a replacement for her mother, Mildred Kennedy . Aimee chose as her new co-minister a “blue-eyed (dirty) blond slip of a girl" named  Rheba Crawford Splival (above, left, looking up to Aimee). 

Rheba (above) was a Salvation Army convert known in New York as “The Angel of Broadway”. But her sudden rise allowed Rheba to dream of taking over Aimee's empire. 

However the Great Depression and the haphazard bookkeeping at the Temple drained even the flood of Sunday offerings. And in 1935 Aimee was forced to execute a coup, reducing Rheba's (above) power on the board and publicly blaming the angel of Broadway and her own daughter Roberta, for the mess. 

But Rheba was an experienced street fighter, and convinced Roberta McPherson to sue her mother for defamation. In a separate suit Rheba demanded $1 million for herself, claiming Aimee had called her a Judas. Mildred "Sister Minnie" Kennedy testified against  her daughter Aimee in both cases. A judge awarded  daughter Roberta $5,000, and Aimee settled out of court with Rheba for an undisclosed amount.

By 1940 the running of the Angelus Temple had been finally placed in the hands of professionals, with Aimee as the spiritual guide only.  It was the role she'd been born to. 

No longer speaking to either her daughter Roberta, or her mother "Sister Minnie",  Aimee had come to rely more and more on her son Rolf (above). And at ten in the morning of Tuesday, 26 September 1944,  it was Rolf who found his mother unconscious in her hotel bed.. There were rumors of course that the “Miracle Woman” had committed suicide. 

And the truth was that Aimee had taken sleeping pills the night before. 

But when they made her feel ill, Aimee had called two separate doctors seeking advice. The first was unavailable, and the second recommended she call a third.  She passed out before she could make the final call. Aimee Semple McPherson was declared dead at 11:15 in the morning of 26 September, 1944. Six thousand faithful attended her funeral in Forest Lawn Cemetery, Burbank, California, on a hill side overlooking the Burbank studio lot. 

At her death, Aimee's personal estate was valued at just $10,000. Daughter Roberta was bequeathed  $2,000. Her mother Mildred Kennedy got a mere $10, with the stipulation that if she contested the will, she was to received nothing at all. 

The remaining $8,000 went to Rolf, the only one who had remained loyal. He would lead the Angelus Temple for the next 44 years, the mother church to almost 9 million believers world wide.  The Temple's founder was not perfect, but the only people who expected her to be that, were the true believers.

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